


a sky full of song

by ChillCapivara



Series: some kind of wonderful [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Fluff and Angst, House Party, everybody gets drunk in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 04:10:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChillCapivara/pseuds/ChillCapivara
Summary: Jyn’s original plans for the night consisted merely of avoiding getting drunk and taking good care of her buddies.They absolutely did not include falling in love.(Title comes from A Sky Full of Song, by Florence + the Machine)





	a sky full of song

Jyn felt her confidence waning with every step she took, the whole excitement and joy from earlier draining away.

She bit her lip to prevent herself from being a coward, but she did glance at Bodhi and Leia, hoping they would catch her meaning and agree to give up on the party.

They did not.

Leia was so thrilled that Jyn heard her humming Shirelles songs under her breath. Jyn wished she knew what caused Leia to be so ecstatic, because Leia doesn’t admit to anything, even though everyone else is able to see the flickering of her eyes when she’s in a crowded room.

Bodhi’s eagerness, on the other hand, probably didn’t have to do with meeting anyone in particular. Jyn suspected that Bodhi only wanted to get to know people, to be able to hold a conversation without allowing his anxiety to get in the way. She was pleased to know that she wasn’t the only one not fully comfortable with the prospect of engaging in social functions, but, at the same time, she wished they were – as Leia was singing – more like the cool kids.

(Jyn thinks Leia is a cool kid, though.)

When they finally got to the ridiculously fancy house, they saw some people at the entrance, and Jyn let Leia and Bodhi go in first, to make sure they’d break the ice for her.

Most shockingly to Jyn, when the bells of doom chimed in on her and she had to say hi to the other party-goers, everyone greeted her warmly… almost as if she were their friend.

They hugged her and smiled and said “ _I’m so glad you came!_ ”

She darkly wondered if they had organized a betting pool on whether or not she would come, and if that was the reason for their happiness (at least for the ones who had bet that she’d come – she had to recognize that it was a courageous wager, she wasn’t exactly sure that she could have predicted its outcome herself). At the end of the day, though, Jyn knew deep down that people meant well, at least the better half of them. Save for her discomfort around persons in general, she had no reason to harbor any sort of negative impression from her college mates.

Just as Jyn was recovering from all the toothy smiles, she saw a stumbling mass of curly hair coming her way, and, this time, the grin that filled her features was genuine.

“Jynnie!”, Shara Bey enthusiastically exclaimed, and Jyn immediately noticed that Shara was, well, drunk out of her mind.

“Shara”, Jyn replied, a bit horrified. What had Shara done to her body?

When Bodhi had said that Shara had to have at least forty livers, Jyn hadn’t quite believed him, but the sight of Shara’s eyelids involuntarily trembling made quite the evidence.

“Jyn, I’m so happy! Everyone is so nice and pretty!”

Shara just had that, that constant state of enchantment by everyone and everything around her. It came out even more after a couple of drinks. It caused Jyn to smile and compassionately hold Shara’s arm.

“You’re also very nice and pretty”, Jyn said, Shara giggled.

Jyn gazed briefly at the dance floor. Leia was discreetly but confidently swaying, whereas Bodhi released his inner Baryshnikov.

“You have to drink this too”, Shara said, gifting Jyn with a glass of red-coloured drink.

Now, Jyn’s original plans for the night consisted merely of avoiding getting drunk and taking good care of her buddies. She had already lived through enough alcohol horror stories to remember for a lifetime; and embarrassing herself in front of her peers was definitely not her goal, but she wasn’t counting on the effects of the mysterious red-coloured drink. It tasted like soda, although the alcohol was clearly one of the ingredients as well.

Jyn drank a glass.

A glass was enough.

 

 

It spread all through her body, like fire licking her skin, veins, arteries, lungs…

 

 

_Mother Superior, jump the gun!_

 

 

She was not unhappy.

There had been times in which that poison pushed the unhappiness out of her body through her eyes and mouth, but this time it did not.  

She didn’t feel its claws around her throat or its weight on her stomach, instead, she just felt like she had swallowed a mouthful of clouds from the sky, the clouds that appeared at noon, when the sky was completely blue.

Maybe she was flying. She didn’t feel like dying. Not yet.

 

 

Jyn recalled lying on the couch, Shara’s arms around her, both of them laughing at their current state.

“I’m so glad I met you”, Shara admitted, and Jyn brushed a curl away from Shara’s face.

Jyn’s foggy mind couldn’t conceive on why it was so difficult for Shara to confess that she was happy to have friends. Maybe it was self-preservation, still – Shara was such a sweet soul. Having female friends such as Shara and Leia had been an unexpected blessing and they did Jyn a world of good.

Jyn could tell them things; trivial matters, like the newest recipe she had learnt or maybe the amount of homework she had to deal with; but she could also tell them the big things, like the memories she had of her father and how difficult it was to live on her own, without the one she loved the most. Either way, Shara and Leia were as fresh as a summer morning, smiling at Jyn, healing her wounds with words of cure and gestures of love, a love so pure it tied them together like the roots of a flowery tree.

Jyn only had to close her eyes to picture them talking over strawberry tea about Leia’s misogynistic colleagues, or Shara’s latest love disappointment, or her daily struggles with uni life. They all came together and shared a deep understanding about their lives.

She wasn’t used to having friends, and it took some figuring out to learn how to treat them, but she was ultimately happy to be able to count on them.

They were good remedy for the soul.

 

 

Jyn blinked and Shara was gone from the couch.

“Excuse me?”, Jyn asked one of her classmates. “Have you seen Shara?”

Cassian Andor’s frown didn’t slip for a single second.

“She’s outside”, he grumbled, not even paying Jyn the courtesy of looking at her when addressing her question.

“Near the pool?”, Jyn asked for confirmation.

“Yeah”, Andor made no efforts to extend their communication and promptly turned his gaze back to the adorned walls of the house.

Jyn eyed the surroundings of the pool. Shara was there, animatedly talking to her other gals.

Jyn sighed. She didn’t feel like forcing an awkward line out of her mouth. Chitchatting was terribly exhausting, and the simple thought of having to move her legs made her whole body ache in dread, plus, her cheeks were still aching from all the courteous smiling.  

She glanced at Andor, reclined against the wall, the only person seemingly even more oblivious to the party energy than her.

“I hate parties”, Jyn felt like she could say, and she didn’t know exactly why. It could be the alcohol, but perhaps it was the reasoning that Andor’s brooding state turned him into something akin to a kindred spirit in Jyn’s eyes.

“Yeah”, Andor was contented to say. He was just as antisocial as she was. Jyn wondered if that was why Shara liked the both of them.

Jyn turned to Cassian.

Her mood suddenly changed.

(“ _Fuck_ ” _,_ Han would have said.)

“Why do you wear sunglasses all the time? Is that supposed to make you look like the Terminator?”

Cassian stared at her, and he creased his brows in disbelief.

“I have photophobia.”

Jyn’s eyes went instantly wide, and she dropped her empty plastic cup in surprise.

The laughter that came out of her was completely nervous, she swore later.

“I’m sorry”, she made her attempt at an apology, but there was still a traitorous smirk on her features.

“It’s okay”, Cassian said, once more staring at nothing in particular, quietly dismissing her.

Jyn didn’t know better. She really didn’t.

“Are you drunk?”

Cassian tiredly rubbed the bridge of his nose. As if the malign effects of alcohol weren’t bothersome enough, there was still Jyn trying to be a nuisance for no particular reason.

“Yes”, he admitted.

“Do you remember my name?”, Jyn asked Cassian, grinning cheekily in a way that would have made Han proud.

Cassian was just her classmate and their interactions did not extend much beyond basic questions on their histology class, such as “ _Did the teacher say 10 minutes or 15 of break?_ ”, and of occasionally picking up each other’s pens when one of them accidentally dropped them to the floor.

He was a thoroughly quiet person who made no efforts to fit in with the rest of their peers and ignored most of the attention he received due to his good grades. Jyn secretly admired his intelligence and the effort he put into his work; still, her inebriated state judged that it would be funny to laugh at his oh-so-very-serious-manners.

“Don’t ask me questions when I can’t think properly”, he barked, shaking his head, closing his eyes and leaning heavily against the wall.

“But you can think _properly,_ you said _properly_ instead of _proper_ ”, she argued, while guiding him to a chair for a much needed recovery of senses and judgment.

“That comes without thinking, _Erso_ ”, he dropped with a thud to the very expensive chair. Thankfully, Jyn was surprisingly in a better state than he was and she took care of setting his drink on the table, away from his grasp in order to avoid an unnecessary horror show.

“You don’t seem like someone who would get wasted at a party”, she remarked, sitting on the couch close to his chair. If Shara really liked this guy, Jyn supposed that she would have to get along with him.

“Neither do you, yet here we are”, he countered.

“Was it because they pressured you?”

“Maybe”, Cassian rolled his eyes.

“Yes, then. Who was it? Han?”

“It doesn’t matter… I was stupid to drink this much, that’s all.”

Cassian looked at Jyn pleadingly. _Let this matter rest._

The part of Jyn that slept for so long, and yet was somehow always present within her core – the part that wanted to save the world when she was a child and that used to change people with her empathy – was awake.

“I can understand why they did that…”, Jyn started to ramble. “They esteem you. They think you’re smart. Maybe their pressure is just a way to show that. That they want you to be their friend”, she finally turned to look at him, and was surprised when she found him staring intently back at her. His eyes were somewhat larger, darker, and more expressive.

“Thank you”, Cassian replied, his voice quiet.

Jyn asked herself if he was used to receiving sincere compliments rather than adulation. She knew he despised the latter, and the thin line between them was apparently clear enough for him to the point of getting touched at the recognition of frankness.

Jyn smiled.

“Now, my case is much more ordinary than yours. I was just taken aback at the, the STRENGTH of the drink, you know?”

Cassian kept gazing at her…

“Yeah”, he said, and he did not smile, but Jyn liked to think that he was about to.

There was booty song playing. Their colleagues were dancing without a care in the world, laughing and swallowing whole bottles of liquor, some of them were making out in the dark, and there was a random dude asleep on one of the couches (he was also reeking of marijuana).

“They’re not gonna remember any of this come Monday”, Cassian said. Jyn thought she heard a hint of sadness in his tone.

“Of course they will, they’ll just pretend like they don’t.” And it was true. From Jyn’s experience, when people sobered up, they brushed off the accusations of drunken acts only due to their lack of bravery leading to shame: most of alcohol-induced endeavours were things that people secretly desired to do when they were sober.

Cassian chanced a look at her.

“Cynicism sounds more like the Erso I know.”

Jyn chuckled. “So you do have a sense of humour!”

“Don’t tell anyone, they’ll think I’ve gone mad”, Cassian was getting closer and closer to a smile.

“I can’t promise you anything, I…”

Jyn’s voice was drowned out by the loudening of the speakers. The stereos almost twitched with the ever-worsening quality of the songs and Cassian made a disgusted face at the blatantly sexist lyrics.

He moved from his chair to her couch to listen to what she had to say.

He put his ear right next to her lips, and she was startled by the sudden closeness.

“What were you saying?”, Cassian whispered in her ear, sending an involuntary shiver down her spine.

Jyn tried hard to take no notice of the intimacy of having this boy whispering so close to her. She tried not to think of what it meant to have him speaking softly and confidentially to her, using only his breath without his vocal chords to have privacy with her. She wasn’t sure she could look wholly past that; nevertheless, she tried.

“Nothing special”, she voiced back, hoping that he couldn’t hear the break in her tone, the brief moment of hesitancy of brave Jyn Erso.

Cassian relented and pulled away.

The loss of closeness wasn’t nice, and it made Jyn nervous. She didn’t know why she wanted that sensation back, but she did, and all thoughts of real life were forgotten.

“Do you know if they played any cool songs?”, she moved to ask him, moving her hand up to muffle the sound of the speakers.

Jyn’s action had the wanted effect, and Cassian moved to talk in her ear again.

“They were playing James Brown earlier, before you got here.”

They were standing cheek-to-cheek, and she grinned against his earlobe.

“Did you see when I arrived?”

The nearness was very lovely. She could hear his breathing, the moments in which he became short of it.

“Yes, I saw you.”

There was a pause in which neither one pulled away.

And then two hours of spontaneous combustion, of talking about college, friendships, literature, music, politics, society, and so much more. Two hours of getting to know someone she saw every day, but never really looked at.

 

 

There was a movie that Jyn saw when she was younger. It was a 1946 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. It wasn’t very notorious, and so it faded from her memory with the passing of the years. Jyn remembered the scenes in which Ingrid Bergman’s and Gregory Peck’s characters were discussing love, though. Jyn did not forget the swift soundtrack of the black and white movie, when Ingrid Bergman’s doe eyes were slowly widening at the sight of Gregory Peck’s intense stare.

 _“But it doesn’t happen like that, in a day”,_ Ingrid tried to argue, when in fact she wasn’t putting up any argument at all.

 _“It happens in a moment, sometimes”,_ Gregory reassured her, his eyes knowing.

 

 

They were sitting near the pool area, watching their silly colleagues swim, even though it was freezing.

Cassian’s body was leaning against hers, their sides touching. Jyn didn’t make much of it. It was freezing, she told herself, and besides – the settee was small. There wasn’t much room for them to sit comfortably. 

 _How did I get here?,_ Jyn asked herself, stealing a glance at Cassian when she thought he wasn't looking. The more important question was actually " _How did_ he  _get here?_ ". Jyn had no idea of what Cassian was doing, getting so close to a girl who obviously amused herself far too much on his expense. 

_Maybe he just wants to be my friend._

She turned back to their small talks, contented with the goofy mood.

“Look, I’ve got an email”, she told him, and he peered past her shoulder to her phone.

“You shouldn’t check your mailbox when you’re at a party”, he jokingly chastised her.

“Because you know exactly what people should do at parties”, Jyn retorted.

Cassian opened his mouth to probably offer some witty reply, but the voice of a random girl cut in.

“Guys, it’s cold! Come inside!”, she said, and when Jyn looked at her, she recognized her as another one of their classmates. Although Jyn didn’t remember her name, the girl was nice enough.

Jyn and Cassian obeyed and returned to the living room, but there was this small inconvenience of overcrowding.

The two seats that were left unoccupied left a touch of gravitas in the air.

Jyn took it in stride, squeezing herself against the armrest to make room for the nice girl, but then just when the girl was about to sit down, Cassian got in her way and sat down first.

He had that look on his face. A distant smile.

There were plenty of people in there, and they soon found themselves engrossed in conversation, and, as much as Jyn hated to admit it, it wasn’t awful.

She was aware of all the places in which her body was touching Cassian’s, though. For someone who had to share a relatively small seat with a person he rarely spoke to, he seemed to be surprisingly satisfied.

Time passed, the conversation gradually fizzled out in favour of another round of Truth or Dare in the kitchen, and Jyn and Cassian were left alone in the living room (well, _almost_ alone – the passed out pothead was still snoring on the couch).

There were plenty of empty seats, now, and Jyn imagined little eyes on the inanimate objects, staring accusatorily back at her.

She was short of breath, thinking that Cassian would move away from her, toward one of the unoccupied chairs, toward safety and propriety.

He did not.

 

 

 “ _People fall in love, as they put it, because they respond to a certain hair colouring or vocal tones or mannerisms_ ”, Ingrid reasoned, fixing her glasses, her hair strands blowing in the wind. She was clinging to her ways, her manners – who could blame her?

“ _Or… or… sometimes for no reason at all_ ”, Gregory maintained. Beneath his peaceful face, he probably knew things that Ingrid wasn’t ready to face yet.

He waited.

 

 

Jyn didn’t realize that the music was still playing.

The only sounds she could focus on were his intakes of breath.

“Do you want to join the others? See how they are?” She asked quietly, looking at anywhere but at his face.

“…Yes and no at the same time”, Cassian formulated after a moment’s hesitation. “You?”

She could have made the sensible decision to quit before it was too late, but amidst the many voices arguing inside her mind, the one which spoke the loudest presented no facts or figures or motives, only spirit.

“Yes and no at the same time as well”, Jyn mirrored his answer.

There was a flicker of something in his eyes, similar to the spark Leia occasionally exhibited.

He hung his head against her back, closed his eyes, almost hugging her small frame.

She was still trying to brush it off, guessing that it was probably the alcohol kicking in, even though there had been several hours since he had last consumed it.

She did not dare ask if he was okay. She just turned her attention back to the chandelier, trying to be prim and proper, almost as if she were lying back and thinking of England.

She did not entertain the thought at the time, but when she recalled that moment, she acknowledged that he was probably fighting something, suffering somewhere else – the truth was that she did not know what that moment meant to him. What _she_ meant to him.

He stretched his arm like a cat in the sun, and, before she knew it, he had his head dangerously close to her face.

 

 

_“A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,_

_And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.”_

 

She weaved her fingers through his very dark hair, caressing him, whispering comforting words in his ear. This she could give him, and there wasn’t a single bone in her body that would come to regret that act.

“Everything’s alright”, she assured him, and she was ready to be his friend, as long as he did not forget of her come Monday.

_Will you still be like this in real life?_

She could sense that he was there with her, living the moment, and her mind’s doubts didn’t sound like anything of consequence.

She opened her palm to him, because she wished to be held, and he intertwined their fingers, caressing the back of her thumb.

Her hand was smaller and whiter than his, but it still fit in very nicely so.

She did not have to look at him to know that he had a peaceful and contented expression on his face, but even so, she was pleasantly surprised when she saw his cheeks slightly rosier than normal.

Ingrid was probably right – “ _The point is that people read about love as one thing and experience it as another. Well, they expect kisses to be like lyrical poems and embraces to be like Shakespearean dramas_ ” – and Jyn knew in her heart’s open wound that there were no such things as fairy tales (and this was the farthest thing from fairy tales, anyway) but she also knew herself well enough to recognize that she was already fond of him. She tried to trace back the origins of the feeling, but the only explanation was that it happened that night.

His chest heaved when he took a deep breath. He was preparing himself, she knew. He brought her closer with the arm he had around her and touched her cheek with his nose in the subtlest of contacts, and stopped for a bit before he did other things. There lied his mistake.

An intrusive thought slipped in, and suddenly Jyn was reminded of talks over strawberry tea, talks that she could not betray under any circumstance. It spoke louder than anything else she could allow herself to feel, and she didn’t stop to reconsider her resolve, lest she broke and gave in.

“I think Shara has a crush on you”, Jyn confessed with a heavy heart, extricating herself from his embrace. She didn't have the courage to look at Cassian's face, but she saw it from the corner of her eyes nonetheless, and she didn't miss his grief-stricken expression. 

The spell was broken.

**Author's Note:**

> (There will be a sequel. Eventually. Maybe...)  
> This was inspired by the song A Sky Full of Song, by Florence + the Machine. Florence you goddess  
> "Mother Superior, jump the gun!" is a verse from Happiness Is A Warm Gun, by The Beatles.  
> The 1946 Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck is called Spellbound. It's a dated movie, but I love it with all my heart  
> The poetry verses come from the poem Asking For Roses, by Robert Frost.


End file.
